Ratos De Porão: Ensaio Para O Lira - 1985 7"

Ratos De Porão: Ensaio Para O Lira - 1985 7" (Morrer Discos) Alongside an official reissue of the band’s landmark debut LP—1984’s Crucificados Pelo Sistema (which we also have in stock)—Morrer Discos brings us this lesser-known but killer slice of Ratos De Porão ephemera. It’s worth taking a moment to understand what this release is and how it fits into RDP’s (and hardcore’s story). After Ratos De Porão recorded Crucificados Pelo Sistema, the drummer and vocalist left the band. Original members Jão and Jabá—bass and guitar—reconnected with original drummer Betinho, with Jão taking over vocals, reconstituting the group’s 1981/82 lineup (the same iteration of the group that contributed six scorching tracks to 1983’s brilliant Sub compilation LP). What’s crazy isn’t so much that the original band got back together, but that they basically turned the clock back and picked up right where they left off. Thus, even though it says 1985 on the cover is this record, the music here is pure 1981/2 hardcore punk. I have always loved recordings that date right from the birth of hardcore, and that’s what this sounds like… moments remind me a lot of Bad Brains’ Black Dots tape, though what it really brings to mind is the earliest Riistetyt / Cadgers stuff. Of course there was a lot of cross-pollination between the Brazilian and Finnish scenes, and bands like Ratos and Cadgers just had to be working with a very similar set of inspirations. The recording here is very raw… I could be wrong, but it sounds to me like a rehearsal recording rather than a multi-track session, since there are bits of chatter and tuning between the actual songs. Nevertheless, it sounds fantastic. You can hear everything (well, maybe the bass gets kind of lost in places…), the guitar sound is brutal and powerful, and even though there are no overdubs that I can hear, there are backing vocals make the songs sound really dynamic. And the songs themselves are brilliant… trimmed-to-the-bone slices of minimalist hardcore punk with that infectious sense of excitement and discovery that you get from the first-wave classics.